Counting Votes

Published: November 19, 2006

To the Editor:

It was heartening to see Michael Kinsley give America's flawed election system the attention it deserves (''Election Day,'' Nov. 5). However, when discussing ''Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count,'' of which I am a co-author, Kinsley writes that ''the authors offer no particular reason to believe the random exit polls and disbelieve the actual vote.''

Kinsley apparently associates ''random'' with meaningless, when in fact randomly selected samples are a fundamental principle of statistical inference. The 2004 national exit poll sampled more than 100,000 respondents. The sampling error on such a poll is well under plus or minus 1 percent.

Our book is a systematic investigation of the only two hypotheses that could explain the seven-percentage-point (nine-million-vote) disparity between the exit poll results and the official count. Either Bush voters participated in the polls at a far lower rate than Kerry voters, or the count was corrupted. No data has ever been released that would support the thesis that Bush voters responded to the exit polls at a lower rate. Indeed, the data indicate that where Bush voters predominated, response rates were slightly higher than where Kerry voters predominated.

This disparity between the exit polls and the official count is significantly higher in the election's 11 battleground states, and higher yet in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. And, in contrast to the seven-percentage-point disparity in precincts where the votes were counted by machines, no disparity is found in those few remaining precincts where votes were cast on paper and counted manually.

Steven F. Freeman

Philadelphia

To the Editor:

Referring to the commitmentstated by the chief executive of Diebold, which made the voting machines used in Ohio in 2004, to help ''Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president,'' Michael Kinsley cites the principle of Occam's razor as favoring ''the lesser idiot theory'' -- that is, while it was idiotic for a Diebold executive to make such a statement, it wouldhave been moreidiotic, thereforemore unlikely, that Diebold also would fixthe votes. On the contrary: the principle of Occam's razor clearly favors the likelihood that the statement of an intention will be followed up by the implementation of that intention. As for idiocies, history, as well as current events, show that people are just as likely to choose the greater of two of themover the lesser.

Samuel Reifler

Rhinebeck, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Michael Kinsley makes reference to Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, stating no voting system can accurately translate individual preferences into a consensus winner even in theory. This is true under the conditions stated in the theorem, but these conditions are very restrictive and are unnecessary in practice. In particular, the theorem requires the voting system handle all manners of likes and dislikes, but being a member of society (i.e., not being an outlaw) requires some similarity in likes and dislikes. The theorem also requires that only the ordering of likes and dislikes matters, not the intensity of the likes and dislikes. Intensity matters when individuals can invest to influence an election or reward other voters for their favorable result. Without these restrictions it is quite possible for a voting system to translate individual preferences into a consensus winner both in theory and practice.

W. Richard Meyer Jr.

St. Louis

To the Editor:

Michael Kinsley describes Sanford Levinson's ''Our Undemocratic Constitution'' as ''admirably gutsy and unfashionable.'' Then he goes on to say, apropos of Levinson's call for broad constitutional reform, that ''others may feel, though, that the Constitution is a Pandora's box better left unopened for fear of what else may get mucked around with.''

How many ''others'' hold to this stand-pat position? How can we know short of a national poll? The problem is that any sort of plebiscite on the topic would be perceived as an end-run around the ferociously difficult amending clause set forth in Article V and therefore would be quickly quashed by the courts. Thus, any comprehensive review of how the Constitution is doing after all these years is prohibited by ... the Constitution. Kinsley may think our 219-year-old plan of government is still doing a heckuva job, but my opinion is that if the document were ever really opened to democratic review, we would quickly find that the people as a whole do not agree. A Senate based on the principle of equal state representation would not survive one minute under such scrutiny . Neither would the Electoral College, the Second Amendment or a slew of other dubious holdovers from the 18th century.

Daniel Lazare

New York

The writer is the author of ''The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy.''